Do you remember learning to color? Several years I walked in on my kids coloring and they asked me “Daddy, can you help us color?” I said sure, then they looked at me and said “Daddy do you know how to color?” I said baby I am the king at coloring. So I start coloring and they say “Daddy do you know how to stay in between the lines?” I said oh, I might go outside the lines so they said how about you not help us color. Why? Because it was important to them that I stayed within the boundaries. Let me ask you this: what do you do when Jesus colors outside the lines? What do you do when there are certain boundaries, certain expectations that you have of Jesus and he won’t stay within the lines?

This coming Sunday is what we call “Palm Sunday” or the “triumphal entry.” This event is found in all four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is a time when Jesus made His way into Jerusalem. People lined the streets very excited and hailed Jesus as their king shouting “hosanna”; which literally means save us now. They had certain expectations of Jesus. They expected Jesus to ride into the city and overthrow the Roman government - to do away with what Herod had established and set them free from the political structure and set up His (Jesus) new form of government. But they would discover what many of us know, that Jesus doesn’t always move according to our expectation? You see Jesus did not come to take sides He came to take over!!! He colored outside their lines.

So, what about you? Has Jesus ever colored outside your lines? What do you do when you hold an expectation for your marriage and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to? How do you handle the disappointment of kids that go wayward? What about that job promotion you have been believing for and somebody else got promoted and you feel like “wait a second” God, that promotion was supposed to be for me. Or maybe you have struggled with sickness in your body and you have done everything you know to do to stand on the promises of God but you still haven’t found your healing. Maybe you have longed to be a parent but you have struggled with infertility and you see other parents and you wonder are they even competent to be a mom or a dad? How do you negotiate the coloring outside of the lines?